In Memory of Wally West
by Marisol Hashimoto
Summary: A short. Wally West is dying in a sewer tunnel with only the will of a Healer, Luke Evans keeping him alive. As they both near death, Luke remembers who they fell in love. Mature themes.
1. Chapter 1

'You idiot,' my hands glow brightly in the darkness, casting a green wash over his face. In this light, his hair could be the same colour as mine, I think idly. I am briefly distracted by memories of copper-red strands and the smell of steel.

' _You idiot. "Metal Explosion Cologne?" This is arguably one of your worst decisions to date; and that's a tough competition to win.'_

 _His green eyes flick over to mine and his trademark grin flits across his face. He can't have any idea what that smile does to e; I'm ashamed to admit I have to concentrate to refrain from swooning._

' _Dude, I smell_ _ **amazing**_ _as it is, I just like to give the ladies a little extra touch,' He replies, wiggling his eyebrows._

 _I catch myself. I want to ask if it's just the ladies. I want to ask if a non-lady, dude-guy is also a… a what? A possibility? I'm just being stupid._

 _Thankfully, my pause is hidden by Artemis' quick quip back and I watch, feeling that familiar tightness in my chest, as he splutters and tries to think of a witty comeback. He has less freckles when he blushes, I think._

' _He'll figure it out one day,' I shouldn't be surprised that Robin knows what I'm thinking about… or that he's snuck up behind me. I swear, the kid's a freaking ghost. 'You've just gotta wait for him to figure out he likes you…'_

 _I snort in disbelief, 'And when's_ _ **that**_ _gonna happen? He's gonna moon over M'gann for the rest of my miserable life and then where will I be? Not exactly gruntled.'_

 _He grins at me and, behind his mask, I can tell he wants to laugh. 'Gruntled?'_

 _I smile, 'You're not the only one who likes word-play, bird-boy.'_

 _That does earn me a chuckle, but it comes to an abrupt halt. 'Really, though. Are you okay?'_

' _Honestly? I don't really know what okay looks like at this point, Rob.'_

 _Before he can respond a plume of smoke rises from the building we are currently staking out and I hear M'gann's frantic voice in my head through the link._

' _Alright, Team,' Robin adopts his Leader Voice with a final sideways glance at me, 'Let's do this.'_


	2. Chapter 2

He is responding. I can feel his heartbeat gaining in strength; the blood that pumps through his body becomes less dependent on my will to force it through his veins. Something is still wrong though; his healing is too slow.

I kiss his forehead and force my power to work. Focusing every ounce of my will through my fingertips, I command the pain to ease and the body to heal. I add my own silent entreaty to my gift, to whatever celestial being might be out there, but mostly to the boy who is slipping away before my eyes.

 _Please._

' _Please get out,' I hold my towel in front of me like a shield. When he doesn't move, I continue, 'Look, dude, you can shower in about five seconds flat if you really want to – do you really have to while I'm in here?'_

 _I'm standing, naked, in the Base's main shower-room with nothing but a towel between myself and those green eyes that I can't stop thinking about. It's midday on Monday so everyone else should be at school – and even Kaldur is in Atlantis doing some Atlantean magic training – which is why I risked using the communal shower without my boxers; I've got one clean pair on me and I can't exactly get them wet._

 _He still doesn't move; he seems frozen, as if in horror._

 _It's then that I notice he isn't wearing his lucky wristband on his left wrist._

 _The wristband I see mostly in the summer when it's too hot for long sleeves – it hasn't occurred to me until now that he seems to hate short sleeves. The sixth-sense that's been slowly growing since I developed my powers screams at me as I sense a tangle of pain centred around that wrist._

 _My powers – the ability to heal people – developed only a short time ago. At first it was difficult to heal so much as a grazed knee; I barely knew anything about anatomy and I didn't fully understand what I was doing. But as my power deepened, I gained an instinctive knowledge of medicine, disease and human biology. My limit of grazes grew to shallow cuts and fractures and a mild cold to stab wounds and broken bones and viruses. And as it did, I began to get snatches of… premonition._

 _I felt Robin's flu beginning to develop before the symptoms manifested. I felt when Artemis sprained her wrist with my back turned to her._

 _And now, I feel scar tissue, and a deep mental pain that is centred around his wrist._

 _Without thinking, I wrap my towel around my waist and step forward. My hand stretches out in front of me, automatically seeking the injury that it can heal._

 _The flinch that rocks through his body causes his foot to slip on the slick tiles and shoot out from underneath him._

' _Shit,' He mutters, catching himself with his hand, and I am surprised to hear the frustration in his voice. 'Crap, crap, crap!' This is all he manages before he falls silent._

 _It's almost too surreal. In front of me is the freckled boy who can practically melt my heart with a smile and I'm kneeling in front of him in nothing but a towel. His eyes are greener like this, I notice, the tears make them too bright, too green._

' _Hey.' It's a single word but it forces him to look up at me again and breaks his reverie._

' _You weren't supposed to see. You weren't supposed to know. No one's supposed to know!' He mumbles, more at the ground than me. He's rocking slightly I think, but I can't be sure – his super-speed makes it too difficult to tell._

' _It's okay, hey, it's okay.' I attempt a reassuring smile but am fairly sure it comes out wobbly. 'You don't have to tell me about it. I don't have to know, it's not my business.' I keep repeating this until he relaxes, his eyes clear and he looks at me properly._

' _You won't…' His voice is frail, hardly there. 'You won't make me tell you what I…'_

' _No, of course not.' I assure him. 'You don't have to tell me anything you aren't comfortable with.' I feel him relax minutely. 'I just have two questions and then I'll drop it completely.'_

 _That raises his guard again. The traitorous part of my heart feels a pang that he doesn't fully trust me. The reasonable part of my brain reminds me that I've only known him for a few months now. It feels like longer._

' _What do you want to know?' Somehow the question comes out as a challenge._

' _I need to know that I'm not the only one who knows. Have you told Flash, or your parents, or Canary? Someone who can help?'_

' _Flash knows.'_

 _That's good. Flash genuinely seems like a good person and I'm sure he'll know how to properly take care of him. Though I am_ _ **definitely**_ _checking that Flash_ _ **actually**_ _knows about this._

' _You wanted to ask something else.' I miss his jokes. I miss the way he teases me. If he were his normal self, he'd be poking fun at me being so stilted, lost in my thoughts._

 _I take a deep breath. 'Would you like me to heal the scars?'_

 _It's difficult for a speedster to create scar tissue. My powers help me understand the biomechanics of how these scars were formed – the cuts were not a one-off, but systematic. On at least one of these occasions, the cuts were deep enough that he was at real risk of not recovering, even with his accelerated healing – hence the scar formed, and repeated cuts made them more pronounced; stopped them fading at all._

 _Thankfully none of them are fresh. My gift informs me the latest scars are over six months old, thank god. I don't know how I would feel if I had missed this – if I had failed the person I claim to be in love with so drastically. With difficulty, I push this kind of thinking from my mind. This is not the time to be thinking about myself – I am not important at the moment._

 _His breath hitches. 'You- you can do that?'_

 _I shrug, 'I think so?' It comes out as a question. 'I've not done it before or anything, but… I_ _ **feel**_ _like I can. There's this… certainty. Like some part of me understands my powers whilst the rest of me,' I shrug again, 'Doesn't really know what it's doing.'_

' _It's like when I'm running,' He is somewhere far away from me now, lost in memory, 'The speed is both the deepest part of who I am, and something else entirely.'_

' _You don't have to,' I quickly add, 'It's, well, it's just that healing people is almost second nature to me at this point.'_

 _I remember when healing was too easy, too second nature. When my powers first developed and I went into the hospital the next day, I felt like I was going to collapse within a minute of walking in. Without proper control, my healing spilled out and tried to fix whatever it could reach but if I hadn't realised and gotten out I probably would have used up all the energy in my body trying to lessen the pain._

 _I try to avoid hospitals now. Especially since the ability to sense pain developed._

' _Can I think about it?' He looks at me properly, eyes fixing onto mine. Then he looks down at his wrist. It's just that I've had them for so long now…'_

' _Course,' I smile. It is a quiet smile, yes, but it is one that feels truer than before somehow. 'You wouldn't want to be too quick to decide.' I tease. I hope we are back in teasing territory._

' _Pfft. I only make decisions just fast enough, babe.' He waggles his eyebrows at me and, before I can stutter out a reply, he zips out of the shower-room._

 _God, I am so glad he doesn't have Connor's hearing; my heart would have given me away in a second._

' _I'll shower when you're done, dude.' He calls out to me, 'Just text me when you're done, I'm going for a run round the harbour.'_

 _Before I can protest; remind him that I don't have his number yet because Batman is kinda obsessive about the whole "secret identities" thing, I hear the unmistakeable sound of my phone unlocking._

 _Why doesn't it surprise me that he knows my passcode?_

 _Well, I guess at least I've got his number now._

 _It's only after I pick up my phone to text him that I realise he's filled my camera with selfies. I remain unsurprised when I can't find his name in the "W" section of my contacts – he's entered it in under "Hot Stuff."_

 _I grin to myself. Maybe he's gonna be okay._

Please be okay. I don't have much left in me. I will die before I stop forcing my powers to heal him, I will happily force all the energy in my body into his to keep him alive for as long as I can.

But I don't know if he'll make it after I die.


	3. Chapter 3

My hands are beginning to shake from exhaustion; I fight to keep my eyes open. It's a moment before I realise that the rest of me is shaking just as much. Keeping one hand extended over his chest, – it is where the most serious trauma seems to lie – I awkwardly shift my weight over until I am leaning with my back against the curved, dingy metal wall of the pipe and his body across my lap.

The shaking doesn't stop, but it lessens as I stretch in this slightly more comfortable position and refocus my efforts toward healing.

It's not like it matter, anyway. There's no one here to call out my trembling.

 _I'm not the most courageous person in the world, but I like to think that I have a sufficient amount of bravery to get by in my everyday life. I mean, I face some sort of criminal almost every day, I've been toe-to-toe with some pretty powerful villains (even if I often lose – healing isn't exactly an offensive power and I'm not the best at hand-to-hand combat yet)._

 _But somehow, facing Batman – who I'm 90% sure won't randomly try to kill me – makes my hands shiver slightly._

 _I bury them further into my hoodie as if that will stop them._

 _There aren't many benefits of being the only one on the team without a superhero mentor specifically for me. I don't get individual training time out in the field, no one can teach me how to master my powers – or control them at all, really – but, in my opinion, the worst part is that I don't have any direct channel to Justice League. If I want to ask a random Leaguer a question, I have to go through Batman._

 _Which, after three months of vaguely knowing him, is still terrifying._

 _I approach him the same day that I found out about the scars – it's urgent, isn't it._

' _Hi?' I hate that my voice is so quiet. 'Batman?'_

 _Of course, he noticed me the minute I walked into the room. 'Luke.' And of course, his voice sounds like gravel scraping stone – effortlessly confident. 'We don't have a meeting scheduled for another week.'_

 _I grimace at the reminder. My progress meetings with Batman are something I dread. Newsflash: analysing every mistake you make in the field fifteen times is not a confidence-booster._

' _No, I… well I needed to… to talk to The Flash about something…' I feel myself wither under his glare. Not that I know it's a glare – his cowl covers his eyebrows – but his eyes still narrow._

' _And what is so important that you feel you can only talk to him?'_

 _If I could disappear right now, I think silently to the universe in general, that would be much appreciated._

' _It's not that I feel I can only talk to him because I don't trust you or it's super-secret information or I prefer him to you, although he is much more approachable, but that's not the point, though you are_ _ **very**_ _scary, and I seem to be on a tangent, it's just that I found something out and I think that he knows about this thing but I need to make sure he knows about the thing because if he doesn't know about the thing and I'm the only one who knows about the thing then the thing may become a much worse thing later on. I mean, I'll still keep an eye on the thing but I am not a professionally-licensed thing-watcher whereas Flash is, or at least he will get someone who is, because it's not a super important thing right now but if it develops then it could be a very bad thing, and it's not that I wouldn't tell you, it's just that it's not really_ _ **my**_ _thing it's just a thing that I am very invested in.'_

 _I blink in the silence that follows._

 _I need to learn to control my nerves._

' _That was quite the monologue,' His voice dry._

' _Thank you?' I say, because – like an idiot – I always feel the need to say something. I am very quickly aware that this was not the appropriate response._

' _Regardless,' He emphasises the word by what is, in my opinion, an unreasonable amount, 'Flash is away on mission and won't be available until 4am tomorrow morning at the earliest, so it would be best if you just told me about this… thing.'_

 _I check the time; 10:22pm._

 _Not that long a wait really._

' _Can you just ask him to come here once he's finished his mission?' I'm met with a blank stare. 'I wouldn't be asking if it wasn't really important I speak to him right away.' Another stare. 'If we want to be really efficient, we could cut out the middle-man and I could go with you and meet him on the Watchtower?' I ask hopefully._

 _That certainly gets his attention._

' _You know about the Watchtower?' He is suddenly inches from my face and I regret everything._

' _At this point, I feel the correct answer is "no." I don't think this is a convincing answer, though.' I reply._

 _He simply stares at me again. What I've noticed today is that for most of this conversation, he just sort of stood there and…_ _ **brooded**_ _. Batman is a very brooding sort, I realise. Honestly, they say teenagers are drowning in angst – this guy puts us to shame._

 _Well two can play at that game._

 _I stare right back._

 _A few moments pass._

 _At some point, I become aware that it has become a staring competition and I have stopped blinking. It's a very one-sided competition because Batman's cowl makes it entirely impossible to see when he blinks. It's also very one-sided because I have a feeling I am the only one who sees this as a competition at all._

 _After a moment he sighs and leans back. 'I'll contact Flash when he completes his mission and send him your way. But remember for all I know, he'll finish really late and go and get some sleep instead of meeting you.'_

 _And with that, he turns away from me and heads toward the Zeta Tube along the far wall._

' _Nah,' I murmur to myself, forgetting about Batman's ninja-hearing, 'Barry seems like a nice guy, he wouldn't ignore a kid when they need something.'_

' _What did you just say?'_

' _Shit.'_

 _I think I'm half-asleep when I hear the Zeta Tube start up again; my head is pillowed in my arms on the kitchen counter in front of me and the coffee I brewed to keep me awake is, upon inspection, stone cold._

 _All I have time to do is stand up, yawn and stretch before a red blur speeds into the kitchen and The Flash is standing on the other side of the counter facing me, a mess of bruises covering what little of his face I can see beyond his mask._

' _Blimey,' I exclaim, 'You look like you've been dragged through a hedge backwards.'_

 _He shoots me a tired smile, 'Is that one of those weird sayings Kid Flash says you use?'_

 _I scoff indignantly, but behind it I am secretly thrilled that he talks to other people about me. 'Just because some of my sayings are a little dated, doesn't mean they're weird. Don't be rude. And, speaking of rude, have I been waiting too long to offer you some healing?'_

 _He grimaces, 'Does it look that bad?'_

' _One of the cuts on your face has sliced through your orbicularis-' I catch sight of his expression and change tack, 'Through the muscle above your right eye. That's why you it's drooping shut. And judging by the pain I'm sensing from your arm, I think you broke it a while ago but it hasn't healed properly because you didn't set it.' I tilt my head to the side and reach out with my senses further, trying to discover if there's any worse trauma, 'No, you didn't_ _ **break**_ _the bone, something_ _ **shattered**_ _it. It's not healed properly because you couldn't set it. And there are several splinters of bone that aren't healing. What the hell did you fight?'_

 _Attempting a chuckle, he pulls down his cowl with a grunt of pain so that I can easily reach the cuts on his face. 'I'm sure you've healed worse – in fact, I know you've healed worse.'_

' _Robin isn't a speedster.' I counter, 'Furthermore, he's thirteen – his bones are a lot less developed than yours.'_

' _Did you just say "furthermore" out loud?'_

 _I groan, 'Don't tell anyone, I've got enough of a reputation with words as it is.' Reaching for the familiar coolness of my power, I lightly touch a fingertip to his face and watch the cuts begin to close. My fingers barely glow at all with this sort of healing anymore; it's too easy to require any real effort. I know full well that won't be the case with his arm though._

' _By the way,' I add conversationally, as I work, 'Batman may now know that I know your civilian identity.'_

 _It's his turn to groan, 'Great, that'll make him happy. He's so fond of us sharing secrets. How did you explain how you knew?'_

' _The truth.' I answer simply, pulling back from his face. He looks a lot better now, apart from the thin layer of grime that still covers his face, 'I told him that I'd met the civilian you when I visited Star Labs and the superhero you several times and that I'm beginning to be able to sense people's exact biology with my powers. And that Barry Allen's exact physical state matched The Flash's. Not mention the fact your body is fifteen years younger than it should be.'_

' _How'd he take it?'_

' _About how you'd expect. It got worse once he remembered that I've also met Bruce Wayne on all the occasions that I stayed over at Rob's.'_

' _I don't envy you, kid.'_

' _Few do.' I murmur. 'Okay, rest your arm on the counter and I'll sort this mess out.' Gingerly, he raises his left arm and carefully lowers it, wincing at it connects with the countertop. I shake my head, 'Where you honestly going to just go home and hope it healed overnight?'_

' _That's what I usually do.'_

' _Honestly,' I mutter under my breath, 'Speedsters.'_

 _Okay, I think to myself, you've got through the light jokey stuff but now you need to make sure he knows. So that KF's safe._

 _Beginning the healing process gives me the opportunity to break his gaze and focus on the task at hand. 'So…' I twitch the ring finger on my left hand and it begins to glimmer with a hazy green light, 'You're probably slightly curious as to why I wanted to talk with you in the middle of the night after a deadly mission.'_

' _Batman said you seemed worried.' I can tell, even without looking at him, that Barry is giving me a fatherly, concerned sort of look, 'From what I've seen, you don't get worried easily.'_

' _Hah, no I'm just usually quite good at hiding it.' I return, 'I'm a ball of stress and worry.' The work is slow and cautious, I have to pull the bone apart, back into splinters thanks to the botched healing, and half on my power is focused on stopping the sensory information reaching Barry's brain so he can't feel the agony of shifting bone inside him._

' _He mentioned something about a "thing"?'_

 _I smile down at the countertop, 'Ah, yes – the "thing".'_

 _The bone is almost in place, about half the splinters are realigned._

 _I try to keep my voice light but steady. 'Well, erm, I was here earlier and KF was taking a shower and he didn't think anyone was around so I… I saw his wrist-'_

' _What?!' The exclamation is so loud that both of us jump and Barry accidentally slides his arm back across the countertop, but my grip on the fragments of his bone is stronger than his body's (compromised as it is) and shard of white done tear through his flesh, skin and finally suit to stick out of his arm like the spines on some sort of unholy stegosaurus._

 _There are, at my count, six ivory sticks of bone protruding at least three or four inches out of his arm._

 _Barry screws up his face as he waits for the pain, but relaxes slightly when he feels nothing. 'Why,' He asks, looking slightly ill, 'Why can't I feel anything?'_

 _I try to respond but the room spins and my head is suddenly resting against the counter. Dizzily, I force myself upright and focus on my breathing, struggling to get words out. 'I've… blocked the signals… your nerves are sending… to your… brain. You won't feel it.'_

' _Do you feel it?' He asks haltingly, looking at my face in concern._

 _With my gift, I know full-well that the blood drained from my face when I first saw the bone and I am chalk-white right now. I don't bother to answer that obvious question and begin to force the bone back into Barry's body, nearly crying with relief as the pain begins to shift._

 _When I heal someone, that's the only time I like feeling other people's pain. Mainly because I know that I've helped abate someone else's suffering, but also because it means I can't feel their pain in my body anymore. I can't feel the disgusting feeling of my left arm being broken with the simultaneous, dizzying sensation that this pain is only in my head when I look down at my perfectly whole arm._

 _When I can't heal someone, it isn't great fun. I can feel the pain of their injuries ringing through my body like a scream, both somehow a part of and separate from my body. The last time I went to a hospital – after I'd learned to hold the healing in – was like that. I didn't have the energy to heal a patient with a shattered kneecap, and I passed out from the agony._

 _When I'm holding back someone else's pain without actually healing them, it's infinitely worse. The sheer_ _ **wrongness**_ _of sealing nerve signals causes a migraine to build in my head on top of the pain I'm already feeling, whilst my own nerve endings become a thousand times more sensitive. I experience their pain as if it is happening to us both simultaneously with my own senses dialled up to eleven, as if to compensate for their own being forced to zero._

 _Needless to say, it's not something I do often._

 _It takes one hundred and fifty-six seconds to fully reverse the damage to Barry's arm and properly mend the bone. I know this, because I spend each second forcing myself to suck in breaths of air past the tightness in my chest. As the last fracture finally seals, I lean back in my seat, breathing hard, and try to rub the stiffness out of my fingers._

' _All I wanted to know,' I break the silence, 'Is whether you knew about what he did to himself, and that you were keeping an eye on things. Based on your reaction, I'm guessing you know.'_

 _He nods, still looking slightly shell-shocked, 'I was the one who found him the last time.' He admits and I can tell that he's reliving it, 'He tried to starve himself before he did it so he wouldn't heal as quickly-'_

' _Look,' I say, cutting him off, 'I promised him that I wouldn't ask him about it. If he doesn't want me to know the details then that is up to him.'_

' _I just thought that he'd already told you.'_

' _I don't think it's the sort of thing that's easy to talk about. I didn't want to force him to. The only reason I wanted to talk to you was to make sure someone else knew about it.'_

' _You're a good friend to him, kid.' He replies, looking much less uncomfortable now that he knows he no longer has to relive… whatever happened that day._

' _He's a good friend to me,' I reply, a quiet smile tugging at my lips. Even now, even exhausted from healing and talk of horrible things the thought of him makes me smile._

 _I'm such a cliché – the hopeless, head-over-heels crush – that it almost makes me laugh. Until I remember it's not really that funny._

 _Barry studies me for a moment, before straightening up and rising to his feet, a knowing look in his eye. 'Well, I'm glad that one of his friends knows, you can watch out for him in the field.'_

' _You know I'd do that anyway,' I point out, obscurely offended on behalf of our other team-mates, 'You know that we_ _ **all**_ _would, and do, anyway, right?'_

' _Sure, but you know what to keep an eye out for.' He ruffles my hair, 'If anything happens, just call your good, old Uncle Barry.' Out of the corner of my eye, I see a flash of red and see my phone inexplicably appear on the countertop._

' _I swear,' I mutter, grabbing my phone and unlocking, 'You speedsters have_ _ **no**_ _manners. And I bet you put the number under something stupid, like… "Uncle Barry"? You're not even my Uncle, honestly!' By the time I've finished this little tirade, he's already disappeared; calling something I can't quite make out._

' _What?' I yell out, hoping he can still hear me._

 _There is a split second of silence before, louder than the cool, calm, Zeta Tube voice, I hear him call back._

' _I notice that you haven't changed his name back from "Hot Stuff" yet!'_

 _He's gone before I can think of a comeback._

It's quite cold here. Or maybe that's just me – it's getting harder to tell the difference between my powers and the world around me. The boundary between my self and my healing is beginning to dissolve like a line of watercolour inks.

That's a pretty thought, I think idly, like a painting.

My powers are beginning to bleed through the careful controls that I have had in place since I first knew how. I don't know what's going to happen when I lose it completely.

And I don't think I want to find out.

If it's any consolation, I muse, I'll most likely already be dead by the time that happens.


End file.
